Given that Sira was fighting them one second and then was all gung-ho to join the Forsaken, I’d say their was some very heavy mind control used indeed.
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i think she meant free will for her original followers. She has never been anything but cruel to her enemies, so i doubt she’d have any compunctions against mind controlling the night elves she raised.
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That’s not the case. Sira hasn’t gone patriotic to the Red Banner, she’s evolving in the same rejection of beliefs she was already undergoing when she was alive.
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I don’t know why people overlook the fact that becoming undead warps your personality in the first place.
It’s been addressed out of game through cdev interviews, and in game by characters like Voss.
When you are raised your soul is improperly attached to your corpse. For most Forsaken (seemingly all of them but Faol) this results in losing/deteriorating memories, aspects of your personality, your senses, and ability to feel emotion (particularly positive ones.)
Night Elves that accept being raised may have intended to immediately turn on the Forsaken, but became warped enough through the process that they join them instead.
It gets overlooked because it’s a handwave that doesn’t resolve the dissonance created between the sheer magnitude and tragedy of what happened to the Night Elves, something that was very much presented as a tragedy, and this outcome. You can attempt to explain the matter until you’re blue in the face, but if your audience can’t wrap their heads around what that actually means, they’re not going to accept it. Willing undead Night Elves don’t really work for this reason.
Forceably raised and mind controlled? That’s more believable, but it comes with this little problem of attacking a core tenet of forsaken identity. This entire society came about and defined itself around revenge. As soon as they got their free will, they wanted vengeance on Arthas for killing and enslaving them in the first place. He and his actions became their foundational adversary. It was the same thing with the Knights of the Ebon Blade. So you can’t do that either. (I’ll also add, if this is how the original forsaken reacted when they got free will, then how does the mind-warping explanation continue to hold water?)
This is why Night Elf Forsaken were a catch 22 that Blizzard never should have engaged with.
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I think that could be explained away by Sylvanas lying about conditioning forsaken after the events of silverpine. Her character arc is that she has become Arthas so that is no coincidence. That would make the free will that has been a cornerstone of their identity a complete lie. It would give the character agency but not 3rd gen forsaken. It would be an interesting development to see how they react to find out someone they worship as A godess has betrayed them. The trinket text mentioned that the strongest valkyr can dominate the will of others.
If I were a forsaken player, I think that explanation would infuriate me. Horde players are already having trouble feeling as though their choices in who their characters are don’t matter - codifying it would worsen the situation.
His continual use of the Light probably accounts for some of that.
Sylvanas believes in free will.
She also believes that what her Forsaken do with their free will should be love her and obey her without question.
It’s like free speech.
I’ll defend your right to say what you want, but reserve the right to think you’re an idiot for saying it.
And die if they do not.
I’ve been infuriated about the Forsaken writig since Golden retconned Sylvanas and us as seeking to forget and erase our history entirely rather than focusing on it the way she and the Forsaken were regularly shown.
It works because the Forsaken are literally dying out and to stall long enough for the Forsaken to find a way to reproduce and prevent their extinction, they need bodies to throw through the meat grinder against the Alliance. Why would they just give everyone free will like the original Lordaeron Forsaken, when all they need is more soldiers for the war. She isnt raising the Night Elves to be her people, shes raising them as fodder. Thats it. So their tenet of free will still stands, it just only applies to Sylvanas’ Forsaken, not the throw away undead like the Night Elves.
As you should be. I would imagine that the forsaken revering and holding onto what they once were would be important for them.
To this:
It works because the Forsaken are literally dying out and to stall long enough for the Forsaken to find a way to reproduce and prevent their extinction, they need bodies to throw through the meat grinder against the Alliance. Why would they just give everyone free will like the original Lordaeron Forsaken, when all they need is more soldiers for the war. She isnt raising the Night Elves to be her people, shes raising them as fodder. Thats it. So their tenet of free will still stands, it just only applies to Sylvanas’ Forsaken, not the throw away undead like the Night Elves.
If we agree to and admit that free will isn’t happening here, then I have to ask how rank and file forsaken are okay with this, regardless. I would expect there to be an ideological resistance to forceable raising and controlling - because again, that’s exactly what happened to them.
It may be that I formed a lot of my experiences from Vanilla, but I remember the Forsaken being nobler than this.
I don’t know about revering or holding on to what they once were. Hoarding and holding on to what they once had (or at least not letting anyone else have it even if they can’t use it now)? Absolutely.
Well, either way, I don’t like it. I don’t like them losing their identity, apparently for the purpose of making them into a sympathy-resistant society to serve as the expansion’s villain.
Again, if I were a forsaken player? I’d be pissed.
Why would the Forsaken, a race that even their allies look at with contempt, care about the morality of raising an enemy that would rather seem them extinct??? The Night Elves are literally out for blood against the Horde in Darkshore, no one is gonna reasonably bat an eye at the idea of forcing their own soldiers to fight one another. Why? Cause every undead Night Elf slain vs the alliance is one of their own that get to live.
How are most modern day soldiers ok with the treatment of prisoners of war in the Middle East? How about American soldiers treatment of the Vietnamese during the Vietnam War? Rank and file troops for the most part don’t care about the situation of those who have wrong them or want them dead. Especially when you take into account the Forsaken lost their humanity the minute they were raised. They were never a noble people.
Your whole argument rests on a bedrock of foundational fallacies. You support your argument, using yourself as a reference to dispute the straw-man you created; ‘Forceably raised and mind controlled?’ thats more believable, but…(here is why its wrong).
But I can ignore that sleight as it does not further the conversation. However, the argument for mind control is equal parts juvenile as it is absurd. All the talk of lazy and contrived writing, yet mind control is the best and only alternative that people can imagine.
This shows a serious lack of depth in literary exploration, and even self analysis, if the only justification for doing bad things is because of ‘mind control.’ It is in its own right, a deus ex machina cliche.
And speaking of cliche, ‘art imitates life.’ Characters in stories are perfectly of committing evil and inexplicable acts without the help of ‘mind control’ or any other form of super natural/high fantasy machinations.
Yes. But a character seemingly becoming a completely different person in a matter of moments is not realistic. A morality shift of this magnitude takes years.
The joker would disagree, “all it takes is one bad day”
Why would the Forsaken, a race that even their allies look at with contempt, care about the morality of raising an enemy that would rather seem them extinct??? The Night Elves are literally out for blood against the Horde in Darkshore, no one is gonna reasonably bat an eye at the idea of forcing their own soldiers to fight one another. Why? Cause every undead Night Elf slain vs the alliance is one of their own that get to live.
Xenonic, I no longer perform analysis from an in-narrative perspective. Blizzard can and has dispensed with that far too easily for it to be in any way meaningful. You can’t make predictions or inferences with it because Blizzard could (and will) tomorrow throw out the rules entirely so that they can force a certain outcome.
I am instead concerned with how the audience engages with the content, and on that basis, I note that when we first started the whole business of having the forsaken raise the undead - back in Cataclysm - there were early concerns that Blizzard replied to with the free will defense. Their recent changes to Darkshore - in having wisps resist being raised - appears to be a commitment to that defense. Free will does appear to exist canonically, and it appears to exist over player concerns. As for why mind control doesn’t work? I think by now it’s obvious - there are player concerns, and many of those concerns come from Forsaken fans, specifically over the invalidation of free will being a cornerstone of Forsaken society, as well as the reasons for why it IS a cornerstone in the first place.
But I can ignore that sleight as it does not further the conversation. However, the argument for mind control is equal parts juvenile as it is absurd. All the talk of lazy and contrived writing, yet mind control is the best and only alternative that people can imagine.
This shows a serious lack of depth in literary exploration, and even self analysis, if the only justification for doing bad things is because of ‘mind control.’ It is in its own right, a deus ex machina cliche.
I am not the writer. It is not my job to supply the explanation for why a thing is happening. It is their job to present the situation in a way that I, as a member of the audience, find believable. I could spend all day contriving explanations for the characters turning on their own, but all of that is meaningless until Blizzard actually puts that in the game.
The writers did have an opportunity to do that. Forsaken players can ask Sira why she turned and she will tell you that there isn’t time to explain it. It could be that they have some reason, but they haven’t shared it with me yet. I must therefore examine what I have and come up with a reasonable conclusion as to what I find believable.